Laptop for student

[Dylan Toniolo]

Hello, I would like to ask for some advice on what laptop to buy, because I found quite a few that are interesting, but can not figure out which will actually be good enough.

For context, my budget is 600 euros, with an absolute maximum of 700, and I live in France (if that changes anything), but willing to buy from overseas as long as delivery is possible.

I will be studying law, so nothing intensive in terms of computer.

Here's what I'm looking for :
-Good battery life (at the very least 8 hours).

-Not Potato Tier performance (I could get a cheap and high battery life laptop but it would take ages to do anything, I am aware, I already have one that just won't cut it), so at least an i3, but preferably an i5.

-Don't need too much performance, as aforementioned, just preferably an i5 to be sure I can still run it without hiccups in the next few years.

-It may be a lot to ask from modern, and especially more budget laptops, but a decent feeling keyboard would be nice, even tho it's not a priority.

-And unfortunately it has to be brand new, for reasons I can't get into (would be too long to explain), and I am aware it makes things a bit more complex.

-It can't be a Chromebook even tho these have a great battery life, I despise the idea of not being able to use my usual programs (such as office, lightroom etc..), even tho it can be shipped without an OS as that does not bother me.

 

So far, here are a few examples of laptops I've found interesting overall, but I doubt the battery life of, especially in the long run :

Please note, however that while some of these are over the absolute maximum budget, they can be configured to fit within said budget, and that I'm mostly just asking for opinions on those laptops.

 

P.S : I know there are other brands that make good laptops, but I don't know what models to go for, and for the few that I found reviews about, the difference between a model and another of the same lineup is so large it confuses me to hell and back about what models specifically are good. And for some others, I just couldn't find reviews about besides those automatically generated reviews that just use the maker's specs and nothing else, no hands-on, no nothing.

Thank you for reading, and for potential advice/suggestions, and please excuse me if perhaps this post is a big long/disorganized.

[EllieCat]

I know this goes over your budget a little, but I don’t live in Europe and can’t convert the price. But here is what I found:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08YWX4W7G?tag=georiot-us-default-20&th=1&psc=1&ascsubtag=cbq-us-8626298634792440000-20&geniuslink=true

[powertoys]

Actually getting 8 hours of battery life with a laptop is currently only doable with the M1 / M2 Macbooks... Windows laptops simply can't compete on this regard.

[Dylan Toniolo]

30 minutes ago, EllieCat said:

I know this goes over your budget a little, but I don’t live in Europe and can’t convert the price. But here is what I found:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08YWX4W7G?tag=georiot-us-default-20&th=1&psc=1&ascsubtag=cbq-us-8626298634792440000-20&geniuslink=true

Hi, thank you for your suggestion, and surprisingly the option amazon defaulted to has a price tag of only 475 freedom eagles (something like 450 euros perhaps), which is a welcome surprise, although to make sure it's somewhat future proof, I would "need" (wow such big words, eh ?) it to have 16gb of ram, and I reckon it isn't upgrade-able since it's a surface ? But, thank you for your relevant suggestion, I'll take note with my tiny pen and paper (for those who know) to save it for later.

[Dylan Toniolo]

Just now, powertoys said:

Actually getting 8 hours of battery life with a laptop is currently only doable with the M1 / M2 Macbooks... Windows laptops simply can't compete on this regard.

Oh, is it really ? It's odd, since in reviews from sites like notebookcheck.biz they got that much battery life or somewhat close to that during their in-house tests (usually web browsing and/or video playback). If windows can't compete, does linux stand a chance ? If so, do you have any advice regarding this ?

[powertoys]

11 minutes ago, Dylan Toniolo said:

usually web browsing and/or video playback

This is precisely why I emphasized "actually". Notebookcheck's tests are standardized, which is nice, but the specific websurfing test on the T14 G2 you linked also assumes you are doing 9 consecutive hours of web browsing on light websites while the screen is on 150 nit brightness (for comparison, the base model M1 Air gets 16 hours on the same test).

 

The T14 G2 gets close to 5~6 hours with ACTUAL usage. The best Windows laptops regarding battery life are usually the ones running recent AMD CPUs (numbers Ryzen 4xxx and above). In my experience they are much more efficient than their Intel counterparts. I don't know if this has changed with the 12th / 13th gen, but I sure know that your choice of an Ideapad with an H-suffix CPU is DEFINITELY not a good one for battery life, as those CPUs are performance oriented.

 

 

Take a look at this video, between 3:54 and 4:52, for a much more realistic battery test, that shows just how superior the Apple Silicon Macs are in efficiency...

 

 

[Dylan Toniolo]

5 minutes ago, powertoys said:

This is precisely why I emphasized "actually". Notebookcheck's tests are standardized, which is nice, but the specific websurfing test on the T14 G2 you linked also assumes you are doing 9 consecutive hours of web browsing on light websites while the screen is on 150 nit brightness (for comparison, the base model M1 Air gets 16 hours on the same test).

 

The T14 G2 gets close to 5~6 hours with ACTUAL usage. The best Windows laptops regarding battery life are usually the ones running recent AMD CPUs (numbers Ryzen 4xxx and above). In my experience they are much more efficient than their Intel counterparts. I don't know if this has changed with the 12th / 13th gen, but I sure know that your choice of an Ideapad with an H-suffix CPU is DEFINITELY not a good one for battery life, as those CPUs are performance oriented.

 

 

Take a look at this video, between 3:54 and 4:52, for a much more realistic battery test, that shows just how superior the Apple Silicon Macs are in efficiency...

 

 

Oh, okay that makes more sense now. I was completely ignoring macs because I can't fit even the base model air in my budget, and also because I don't know how to use MacOs, never used it besides once in a VM and that's it. So you're saying that under realistic workloads (not full brightness display and mostly MS Word) it isn't possible to get 9 hours ? As for the AMD cpu's, I had also read that they were somewhat better at efficiency, but wasn't sure. Actually the models I added to my post were, for most part, available with AMD CPU's for a similar price, it just so happens that the intel models caught my attention first.

And for the H-suffix processors, well I actually didn't notice it had a h-suffix cpu, I must've clicked on the wrong listing, as I went by laptop name from my saved list. Apologies on that one.

Oh wow now THAT is an improvement over competitors, and I never doubted the efficiency of Apple's silicon, it's just that I wasn't even thinking about it due to price, in all honesty. I could probably find a student discount that could make it fit in my budget but that's very much uncertain.

Thanks for your detailed and constructive reply.

[Dylan Toniolo]

3 minutes ago, Dylan Toniolo said:

Oh, okay that makes more sense now. I was completely ignoring macs because I can't fit even the base model air in my budget, and also because I don't know how to use MacOs, never used it besides once in a VM and that's it. So you're saying that under realistic workloads (not full brightness display and mostly MS Word) it isn't possible to get 9 hours ? As for the AMD cpu's, I had also read that they were somewhat better at efficiency, but wasn't sure. Actually the models I added to my post were, for most part, available with AMD CPU's for a similar price, it just so happens that the intel models caught my attention first.

And for the H-suffix processors, well I actually didn't notice it had a h-suffix cpu, I must've clicked on the wrong listing, as I went by laptop name from my saved list. Apologies on that one.

Oh wow now THAT is an improvement over competitors, and I never doubted the efficiency of Apple's silicon, it's just that I wasn't even thinking about it due to price, in all honesty. I could probably find a student discount that could make it fit in my budget but that's very much uncertain.

Thanks for your detailed and constructive reply.

As an update, I've checked and no, student discounts can't make even the base model m1 13" air fit within my budget, it's still about 400 too much. So that rules it out.

And with your comment in mind, I reduce my battery life expectations to about 6 hours, because I don't really feel comfortable taking a gamble with lower than that.

[powertoys]

36 minutes ago, Dylan Toniolo said:

As an update, I've checked and no, student discounts can't make even the base model m1 13" air fit within my budget, it's still about 400 too much. So that rules it out.

And with your comment in mind, I reduce my battery life expectations to about 6 hours, because I don't really feel comfortable taking a gamble with lower than that.

 

6 hours is definitely doable within your budget.

 

Honestly, I think either of these is a good suit. Keep in mind that I don't know much about shopping for laptops in France.

 

https://www.lenovo.com/fr/fr/p/laptops/ideapad/ideapad-500-series/ideapad-slim-5-gen-8-(16-inch-amd)/len101i0081

https://www.lenovo.com/fr/fr/p/laptops/ideapad/ideapad-500-series/ideapad-slim-5-gen-8-(14-inch-amd)/len101i0078

 

Although this is highly subjective, Lenovo has some of the best keyboards in the laptop market, and those 2 laptops fit into your budget and meet all of your criteria.

 

The major differences between them are size and RAM. The 14" has a brighter and much more color accurate screen than the base screen of the 16" model, but at a higher starting price, and the base 16" also comes with 16 GB of RAM which is MUCH better for longevity, and you can't upgrade it after the fact because it is soldered. Both of these will have good battery life and are overall very good midrange laptops.

[Dylan Toniolo]

52 minutes ago, powertoys said:

 

6 hours is definitely doable within your budget.

 

Honestly, I think either of these is a good suit. Keep in mind that I don't know much about shopping for laptops in France.

 

https://www.lenovo.com/fr/fr/p/laptops/ideapad/ideapad-500-series/ideapad-slim-5-gen-8-(16-inch-amd)/len101i0081

https://www.lenovo.com/fr/fr/p/laptops/ideapad/ideapad-500-series/ideapad-slim-5-gen-8-(14-inch-amd)/len101i0078

 

Although this is highly subjective, Lenovo has some of the best keyboards in the laptop market, and those 2 laptops fit into your budget and meet all of your criteria.

 

The major differences between them are size and RAM. The 14" has a brighter and much more color accurate screen than the base screen of the 16" model, but at a higher starting price, and the base 16" also comes with 16 GB of RAM which is MUCH better for longevity, and you can't upgrade it after the fact because it is soldered. Both of these will have good battery life and are overall very good midrange laptops.

Okay so I have just checked out the links you've posted, and I think I'll end up going for the 14" model you sent, unless a "better" (if that's even possible) option comes up. I've ended up configurating it without a windows license, because realistically I don't absolutely need it, as I'll reinstall a lightweight version anyway, with 16gb of ram for a 50 euro extra, a fingerprint sensor because I know I'll use it, for an extra 10, and the 56Wh battery for an extra 10 euros and ended up with a 674 euro total, which is honestly really good for a laptop with 16 gigs of ram, 6 cores and an OLED screen. Though I did not pick the 1tb drive, as that's a 100 euro option, and I realistically don't need it anyway. I think this is a really strong option, as said before. The 16" sounds tempting, but if it doesn't offer anything over the 14 besides screen real estate, I don't think it's worth the extra weight and footprint, especially considering I'll be riding the metropolitan.

 

P.S : I just looked again, and I noticed the 16" offers a 75Wh battery, do you think it's worth it ? That's a substantially larger battery, hence the doubt. That's considering it's got a similar price tag (+20 euros) and has a screen supposed to cover 100% of the sRGB colour space.

P.P.S : It seems they're both on sale right now (10% according to lenovo), do you have an idea of how long that sale will last ? I probably won't be able to afford either without the sale honestly.

[powertoys]

36 minutes ago, Dylan Toniolo said:

P.S : I just looked again, and I noticed the 16" offers a 75Wh battery, do you think it's worth it ? That's a substantially larger battery, hence the doubt. That's considering it's got a similar price tag (+20 euros) and has a screen supposed to cover 100% of the sRGB colour space.

 

I did not even notice that this was a choice - now I do believe that 8 hours is indeed possible, or close to, with that budget. That battery is absolutely worth it if you opt for the 16" model. It's 60% bigger than the base choice and I'm pretty sure it is by far the best battery you can get on a laptop in this price range.

 

Larger screens do need a bit more power, but the 14" is an OLED and the 16" is an IPS LCD. OLED screens tend to use considerably more power than the IPS counterparts. It's likely that the 16" screen actually uses less power than the 14" in this scenario.

 

It's up to you, though, if you'd like the extra screen real estate, battery and the numpad of the 16", or the nicer screen and more portability of the 14" form factor. Personally I like the 16" form factor more as I'm still concerned about OLED burn-in on laptops where the operating systems have a lot of static elements on screen, but it's personal preference.

 

Do keep in mind that even the upgraded screen on the 16" simply cannot match the contrast, brightness or the colors of the OLED 14" panel, nevertheless, if you choose the 16", you should still upgrade the screen as you cannot upgrade it after the fact (technically you can but it's NOT an upgrade for the avg user) and it makes a world of difference.

 

I'd set it up like this:

 

16" model:

- No OS (-100 €)

- Better screen (90 €)

- Fingerprint reader (10 €)

- 4-cell battery (20 €)

Final price: 665,10 €

 

14" model:

- No OS (-100 €)

- 16 GB RAM (50 €)

- Fingerprint reader (10 €)

- 3-cell 56,6 Wh battery (10 €)

Final price: 647,10 €

[Dylan Toniolo]

29 minutes ago, powertoys said:

 

I did not even notice that this was a choice - now I do believe that 8 hours is indeed possible, or close to, with that budget. That battery is absolutely worth it if you opt for the 16" model. It's 60% bigger than the base choice and I'm pretty sure it is by far the best battery you can get on a laptop in this price range.

 

Larger screens do need a bit more power, but the 14" is an OLED and the 16" is an IPS LCD. OLED screens tend to use considerably more power than the IPS counterparts. It's likely that the 16" screen actually uses less power than the 14" in this scenario.

 

It's up to you, though, if you'd like the extra screen real estate, battery and the numpad of the 16", or the nicer screen and more portability of the 14" form factor. Personally I like the 16" form factor more as I'm still concerned about OLED burn-in on laptops where the operating systems have a lot of static elements on screen, but it's personal preference.

 

Do keep in mind that even the upgraded screen on the 16" simply cannot match the contrast, brightness or the colors of the OLED 14" panel, nevertheless, if you choose the 16", you should still upgrade the screen as you cannot upgrade it after the fact (technically you can but it's NOT an upgrade for the avg user) and it makes a world of difference.

 

I'd set it up like this:

 

16" model:

- No OS (-100 €)

- Better screen (90 €)

- Fingerprint reader (10 €)

- 4-cell battery (20 €)

Final price: 665,10 €

 

14" model:

- No OS (-100 €)

- 16 GB RAM (50 €)

- Fingerprint reader (10 €)

- 3-cell 56,6 Wh battery (10 €)

Final price: 647,10 €

Okay, then I'll do the pros and cons of both systems then, but I think I'll end up going for the 16 inch model even tho it implies more weight, for the sake of battery life. Well, I would also say it's the best battery I can get right now for this price range, although I missed on a heck of an opportunity a couple of weeks ago, had no funding. It was a dell inspiron 7620 2in1, i5 1135g7, 16gb ram, IPS (yes) display, 87Wh battery, all the good stuff, and that was selling for 649 euros, then 549, and recently went back up to its original MSRP of 849 euros, which was disappointing. But I'm taking notes for the display. I'll give online reviews one last shot, to see if the bigger battery gives them a significant boost in battery life. I know the tests aren't representative, but if they get a significant boost with their loads, so should we in real world use, even if it's half an hour in the end.

I know how good OLED is tho, yes but honestly now that you remind me of burn-in, I'm mixed about it. I have an AMOLED (I know it's not quite the same thing) in my phone, and it hasn't suffered any burn-in in the past two years, while my dad's (practically the same phone) has, but he leaves his phone on a static image for much longer. No OS burn in at all on my side tho, as I'm somewhat careful with it. Have you personally seen the "upgraded" 16" display ? If so, does it still look good ? I'm not too demanding, as I'm used to LCD, and more particularly TN and Entry Level IPS panels, being my main monitor and laptop respectively. I am just asking to be sure I won't be disappointed even compared to those, which have very... iffy colours. I had to turn up the saturation on my main display, and somewhat match it to my phone, which has beautiful colours. One thing I really do miss with my TN panel is viewing angles, but that should be no problem on the lenovo.

 

As for the configurations, yeah that's pretty much exactly, if not absolutely exactly how I set both of them up when I did it. No OS is the main thing that enables me to afford them, I really don't need a tax for an OS I'll hate but still have to use.

Sorry, I just realized how long this reply is

[Darkseth]

8 hours ago, powertoys said:

but the specific websurfing test on the T14 G2 you linked also assumes you are doing 9 consecutive hours of web browsing on light websites while the screen is on 150 nit brightness (for comparison, the base model M1 Air gets 16 hours on the same test).

 

The T14 G2 gets close to 5~6 hours with ACTUAL usage.

I've had a T14 G2 (i7 1165g7) for a while as a Work laptop, of course administrated by the IT department.

My Model also only had the 1080p Panel.

 

At normal brightness at home i managed like 7 1/2 hours maybe, if i extrapolate. It had like 15-16% per Hour battery loss.

Here's the bummer: It was sitting around doing nothing at all, or i've been doing some very basic things like having Outlook open and doing some Work in Excel (just filling out cells, no macros, no linking to other sheets).

I think 6 hours beeing somewhat productive seems realistic.

 

If it's a 4k screen, it'd be less.

 

I really did not like this Laptop, having a M1 macbook Pro 13" 2020 as my private machine. 

8 hours ago, powertoys said:

The best Windows laptops regarding battery life are usually the ones running recent AMD CPUs (numbers Ryzen 4xxx and above). In my experience they are much more efficient than their Intel counterparts.

I don't know if this has changed with the 12th / 13th gen

Notebookcheck also confirms this in the last 2~ generations. The AMD Ryzen 5000/6000 counterpart had a few more hours than the Intel version.

8 hours ago, powertoys said:

Take a look at this video, between 3:54 and 4:52, for a much more realistic battery test, that shows just how superior the Apple Silicon Macs are in efficiency...

 

That's insane.. i've consumed and seen alot of Videos like this, but i don't think i've seen Apple Silicon smack x86 so much in terms of battery efficiency.

 

But i can confirm that.

On Windows machines with x86 (mostly Intel, never had an AMD Laptop) you can use "better battery" mode, throttle it at all times and it will still suck up the battery as soon you start doing stuff. Like it turbos for every little thing.

 

Apple Silicon can actually stay calm and keeps the Powerdraw at a very consistent low Level, when you do stuff.

Just as if Apple Silicon only draws the power it needs to complete the task, while Intel like to shoot above and beyond to finish it asap with 150% Power.

 

 

Little bonus:
From Work, i've had experience with a 8th Gen i7, 11th Gen i7 and now a 12th gen i7 (1255u).

On 8th Gen and 12th Gen now i could try Geekbench and Cinebench R23.

 

Well.. 12th Gen really got a HUGE step up on Multicore (and Single Core too) compared to 8th - 11th Gen.  But still, it struggles to get more Multicore points than the basic m1 chip even if it consumes more than 30w of Power, while M1 never goes beyond 15w on CPU-Benchmarks.

 

11th Gen Quad-Core: Has the performance of an M1 in Low Power Mode (4w limit). 

 

 

I personally think: M1 Macbook Air is the way to go here. Base model with 256/8gb will do the job. Office, webbrowsing, conferencing etc, no problem with 8gb Ram.

It will be VERY snappy/fast, Battery probably won't run out in a single Day, even if it's a 10-12 hour day. It's silent, great screen, great speakers.

 

In my Opinion, it beats out the T14 G2 in almost every aspect. Batterylife is double, speaker quality is like Worlds apart, Trackpad is better, even Build quality is better.
Thinkpad T14 is more robust (can take more of a beating), and you can upgrade Storage/Ram. But the User Experience in actually using it, Macbook wins alot.

Microsoft Office works, Apple's iWork, LibreOffice, all Adobe Applications..

[Dylan Toniolo]

10 hours ago, Darkseth said:

I've had a T14 G2 (i7 1165g7) for a while as a Work laptop, of course administrated by the IT department.

My Model also only had the 1080p Panel.

 

At normal brightness at home i managed like 7 1/2 hours maybe, if i extrapolate. It had like 15-16% per Hour battery loss.

Here's the bummer: It was sitting around doing nothing at all, or i've been doing some very basic things like having Outlook open and doing some Work in Excel (just filling out cells, no macros, no linking to other sheets).

I think 6 hours beeing somewhat productive seems realistic.

 

If it's a 4k screen, it'd be less.

 

I really did not like this Laptop, having a M1 macbook Pro 13" 2020 as my private machine. 

Notebookcheck also confirms this in the last 2~ generations. The AMD Ryzen 5000/6000 counterpart had a few more hours than the Intel version.

That's insane.. i've consumed and seen alot of Videos like this, but i don't think i've seen Apple Silicon smack x86 so much in terms of battery efficiency.

 

But i can confirm that.

On Windows machines with x86 (mostly Intel, never had an AMD Laptop) you can use "better battery" mode, throttle it at all times and it will still suck up the battery as soon you start doing stuff. Like it turbos for every little thing.

 

Apple Silicon can actually stay calm and keeps the Powerdraw at a very consistent low Level, when you do stuff.

Just as if Apple Silicon only draws the power it needs to complete the task, while Intel like to shoot above and beyond to finish it asap with 150% Power.

 

 

Little bonus:
From Work, i've had experience with a 8th Gen i7, 11th Gen i7 and now a 12th gen i7 (1255u).

On 8th Gen and 12th Gen now i could try Geekbench and Cinebench R23.

 

Well.. 12th Gen really got a HUGE step up on Multicore (and Single Core too) compared to 8th - 11th Gen.  But still, it struggles to get more Multicore points than the basic m1 chip even if it consumes more than 30w of Power, while M1 never goes beyond 15w on CPU-Benchmarks.

 

11th Gen Quad-Core: Has the performance of an M1 in Low Power Mode (4w limit). 

 

 

I personally think: M1 Macbook Air is the way to go here. Base model with 256/8gb will do the job. Office, webbrowsing, conferencing etc, no problem with 8gb Ram.

It will be VERY snappy/fast, Battery probably won't run out in a single Day, even if it's a 10-12 hour day. It's silent, great screen, great speakers.

 

In my Opinion, it beats out the T14 G2 in almost every aspect. Batterylife is double, speaker quality is like Worlds apart, Trackpad is better, even Build quality is better.
Thinkpad T14 is more robust (can take more of a beating), and you can upgrade Storage/Ram. But the User Experience in actually using it, Macbook wins alot.

Microsoft Office works, Apple's iWork, LibreOffice, all Adobe Applications..

Thanks a lot for your insight, and it's honestly amazing to me the improvement apple made with their silicon. I mean to be fair ARM/RISC CPUs are usually way more efficient, at the cost of often being vastly different to most other processors, but that's still very impressive what they achieved.

I do have my own experience about windows battery settings, and I usually tell people to stay away from the "battery saver" and the better battery thing, I just usually use the old power plans (from the control panel) and manually select 0 or 5% of "maximum cpu usage" or whatever it's called (sorry I don't remember too well). That usually got the job done, although my poor intel n4200 in my craptop doesn't perform well when running at a maximum of 800mhz. That's the only way I could squeeze 5 hours out of that laptop.

I would buy a mac and be set for a few years, but I can't afford one, so that's out of the question. Too bad, really, since MacOs does actually run Office and Adobe programs, something linux and chrome don't.

Please do remind me, is the m1 air fanless ? Or am I mistaking it with another apple product ?

 

Thanks again for your insight, and thanks to @powertoys for the advice.

[Darkseth]

6 hours ago, Dylan Toniolo said:

and manually select 0 or 5% of "maximum cpu usage" or whatever it's called (sorry I don't remember too well). That usually got the job done

Keep in Mind, if you set this to 99% (max CPU usage%~ or something like that), ir will pretty much only disable the Turbo Mode, because 100% = Base Clock. Since with 99% the Base Clock isn't hit, iot won't turbo beyond that.

 

So 99% can already decrease Clockspeeds by ALOT, while 5% is so low, that it's onl the lowest state of the CPU.

6 hours ago, Dylan Toniolo said:

Please do remind me, is the m1 air fanless ? Or am I mistaking it with another apple product ?

That's right. Apple Silicon Macbook Air are all fanless.